Bode Miller, who had back surgery in November, training today in Kitzbuehel, Austria, in hope of making it back for world championships in Beaver Creek in two weeks. (Alexis Boichard, Agence Zoom/Getty Images)

Bode Miller had an impressive result Thursday in his attempted comeback from back surgery, finishing sixth in a World Cup downhill training run at Kitzbuehel, Austria. He was 45th there in a training run on Tuesday.

Miller trained last week at Wengen, Switzerland, but decided not to race because his back didn’t feel ready. He sounded encouraged after Thursday’s run on the classic Streif course, the most difficult and dangerous downhill in the world.

“It felt better,” Miller told media in the finish area. “I was happy with it today. This is one of the steps that I was hoping to make. I still don’t think it’s ready to race, but it’s making good progress for when I do race.”

Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone, fighting for the seventh time in 14 months and just 15 days after a victory in Las Vegas, earned a unanimous but close decision victory over Benson Henderson at the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s Fight Night card in Boston on Sunday night.

In a measured, tactical bout, Cerrone earned two takedowns of Henderson (21-5). Cerrone also caught the Colorado Springs native with a high kick to the chin in the first round.

Henderson kept Cerrone at a distance with repeated kicks to the thighs. “I couldn’t unload like I wanted to,” Cerrone said in his in-ring interview.

But Cerrone eked out a 29-28 advantage on all three judge’s cards.

In a post-fight interview, Cerrone said:

“This is a hard victory for me to celebrate. This is tough. I could tell he was timid in there. I love the dude. We grew up together.”

Henderson seemed displeased in the ring with the judge’s decisions giving Cerrone the win.

“The first round was close, second round I took him down, but I don’t know, I’m not a judge,” Cerrone said. “They say don’t leave it to the judges because you don’t know what fight they’re watching. I went in there wild and crazy like I am. Five rounds with Ben is what we always need. We’ll do it again.”

“I want to get some movement here, with bringing Mayweather to the table so we can go out and get everything signed and get the networks together and get the thing finished,” Arum told Yahoo Sports.

Yahoo Sports reports that sources say the fight will take place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, and there is a 60/40 purse split with Mayweather receiving the larger portion, which could be $120 million.

Denver mixed-martial arts fighter Brandon Thatch jumped into the main event slot at the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s Fight Night card at the FirstBank Center in Broomfield next month, the UFC announced Tuesday.

Thatch’s bout against Stephen Thompson, originally scheduled as the top undercard on Feb. 14, will now be a five-round fight airing nationally on FS1.

The former main event, between Matt Brown and Tarec Saffiedine, was scuttled after Saffiedine was injured. Brown will now go against Johny Hendricks at UFC 185 on March 14.

Thatch (11-1) is on a quick rise in the welterweight division after winning his first two bouts since joining the UFC in 2013, then earning a knockout victory over Justin Edwards.

But he was sidelined last year with a broken toe and is eager to return.

“The time off is the worst thing,” Thatch told The Denver Post recently. “I feel like a border collie who’s been stuck in a kennel all day.”

But Alvarado has a history of overcoming obstacles, even the self-inflicted ones.

Alvarado slow-played Breidis Prescott through eight rounds in 2011 — even though Prescott was overmatched — before rallying for a dramatic 10th-round knockout. And he started slow against Rios in Las Vegas in 2013 before buckling down to earn a unanimous decision and the WBO junior welterweight title.

Donald Cerrone, left, and Melvin Guillard fight in a lightweight bout in Denver in 2012. (The Associated Press)

Denver native Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone will fight again sooner than expected after he was added by the Ultimate Fighting Championship to their Fight Night Boston card later this month.

Cerrone, coming off a dominating unanimous decision victory over Myles Jury on Saturday as the top undercard bout at UFC 182 in Las Vegas, will turn right around for a third fight against Colorado Springs native Benson Henderson, UFC president Dana White announced.

Stuart Scott, the longtime face of ESPN’s flagship show SportsCenter, died on Sunday after a hard-fought battle with cancer. He was 49.

Since joining ESPN in 1993, Scott covered numerous major sporting events for the network, and even interviewed (and played a game of one-on-one with) President Barack Obama. And after he was diagnosed with cancer in 2007, he made it known that he would continue to live life to the fullest, often returning to the studio immediately after chemotherapy treatments and practicing mixed martial arts throughout his battle.

“You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and the manner in which you live,” Scott said during his acceptance speech for the Jimmy V Perseverance Award at the 2014 ESPYs. “So live. Live. Fight like hell.”

ESPN published a tribute video for its late anchor after announcing his passing, while others — fans, colleagues, athletes, celebrities — reacted to the news by offering thoughts and prayers for his family, and sharing memories of his work over the years.

While recent warm temperatures may not have folks thinking much about ice fishing, Dave Bryant of Lake Ice USA (719-291-3500) isn’t most folks. He’s always thinking about fishing the hard water. And it shows.

For the past week, Bryant has been pulling kokanee salmon and a few arctic char out of the frozen southeast corner of Summit County’s Dillon Reservoir, where the Snake River comes in and the fish stage for spawning. It’s not uncommon to pick up a few trout lurking to poach the salmon eggs as well.

Denver’s Neil Magny will be fighting in the upcoming February Ultimate Fighting Championship event in Colorado.

Magny (13-4-0), who fights out of the Elevation Fight Team, will take on Kiichi Kunimoto (18-5-2) in a welterweight bout at UFC Fight Night 60 on Feb. 14, 2015 at the FirstBank Center in Broomfield. The fight will air nationally on Fox Sports One.

Magny is on a five-match win streak since his loss to Seth Baczynski last November. Kunimoto, who fights out of the Cobra Kai MMA Dojo, is 3-0 since making his debut in the UFC in January.

The card is headlined with a welterweight match between No. 5 Matt Brown (21-12-0) and No. 9 Tarec Saffiedine (15-4-0).

Also added to the card is a lightweight match between Rodrigo de Lima, who lost to Magny earlier this year, and Efrain Escudero.

Denver’ Brandon Thatch will be taking on Stephen Thompson in the undercard.

Updated Dec. 11 at 1:11 p.m.The following corrected information has been added to this article: Because of an error by a reporter, the team in which Neil Magny trains with was misreported. Magny trains with Elevation Fight Team.

The camera-wielding owners and athletes behind Crested Butte’s Matchstick Productions had been eyeing that line in Alaska’s Tordrillo Mountains for years.

Last winter, snow conditions were perfect and the crew put the line on the to-do list. Cody Townsend stepped up and dropped into the ridiculously narrow chasm, plummeting more than 2,000 vertical feet through a cliff-lined choke that seems too tight. The 31-year-old skier’s segment in MSP’s “Days of My Youth” is storming the internet, with more than a million views and Townsend’s debut on ESPN’s SportsCenter.

MSP co-founder Murray Wais was behind the camera in the helicopter hovering above the dark funnel of snow and rock. He had full trust in Townsend, but the line was sketchy. He worried about barely covered rocks in the gorge.

“If you hit those rocks, it would be all over,” Wais said. “No one else dropped into it. Just Cody. In all honesty, there was quite a bit of danger but it was still straight forward. If you just went for it, it would be all good. He just had to go straight.”

Wais wasn’t overwhelmed with the footage he captured from the heli. Then he watched the POV footage from Townsend’s helmet-mounted GoPro.
“We knew that was one of the most special POV shots ever captured, that’s for sure,” Wais said. “So unique, so fast, so gutsy.”Read more…

Skier Ted Ligety of the United States makes a turn in “The Brink” area on the Birds of Prey downhill course at Beaver Creek, during the Audi FIS Ski World Cup downhill race Dec. 5, 2014. (Andy Cross, The Denver Post)

BEAVER CREEK — Ski races usually are defined by mistakes that separate racers by mere fractions of seconds, and the first run of Sunday’s World Cup giant slalom at Beaver Creek was a great case in point.

Olympic champion Ted Ligety of Park City, Utah, was annoyed after finishing fourth with a ragged run, but he’s only 0.25 of a second behind pacesetter Benjamin Raich of Austria. The second and final run will begin at 12:45 p.m.

“That was a pretty mediocre run for sure,” said Ligety, who has been nearly unbeatable here in GS. “I need to be skiing a lot cleaner the whole way down. Hopefully I can clean it up next run.”

Brendan Schaub poses for a portrait on March 17, 2010 at Easton Brazilian Jiu-jitsu in Denver. (Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post)

Aurora native Brendan Schaub has a tall challenge in front of him when he takes on 6-foot-7 heavyweight Travis Browne at UFC 181 Saturday in Las Vegas.

The 31-year-old Schaub (10-4), who played football at Overland and CU, is no slouch at 6-4 and 240 pounds, said he’s not taking Saturday’s fight against the No. 3-ranked heavyweight Brown lightly.

“Travis is the most dangerous heavyweight in the world, I truly believe that,” Schaub said in the UFC on Fox “All in” vlog. “… His finishing capabilities, they speak for themselves. …

“He’s never fought a guy who’s more athletic than he is. He’s fought guys who are flat-footed and they come at him and it’s easy for him to throw his stuff and throw his knees.”

Since opening up his career with an 8-1 record, Schaub has cooled off, losing three of his last five fights, including a controversial decision split loss to Andrei Arlovski at UFC 174 in June.

Browne (16-2-1) is coming off a unanimous decision loss to Fabricio Werdum in April, and is looking to rebound against Schaub.

Schaub and Browne are on the main card, which starts at 8 p.m. on pay-per-view.

Other local fighters:
Colorado’s own Michelle Waterson (12-3), who goes by the nickname “The Karate Hottie,” will defend her world atomweight championship against Herica Tiburcio (8-2) at Invicta FC X Friday night. The bout can be watched on UFC Fight Pass.

“Prince” Naseem Hamed is carried in triumph by his handlers after beating Puerto Rican challenger Wilfredo Vasquez in a title fight in Manchester, England in this April 18, 1998. (Max Nash, AP file)

The International Boxing Hall of Fame announced its class of 2015 Thursday, headlined by former heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe and lightweight champ Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini.

But the name that stood out to me was “Prince” Naseem Hamed, the talented British featherweight who was known as much for his entrances before the bout as he was for his prowess in the ring (as well as his antics outside boxing). His entrances carried a pro wrestling-esque flair to them, rivaling that of WCW’s Sting or then-WWF’s The Undertaker during the late ’90s, soliciting a mixed reaction of jeers and cheers.

World Cup ski racer Ted Ligety crosses the finish line on his first run of two runs on the Giant Slalom course at the Audi FIS Ski World Cup on December 7, 2014. Ligety was fourth after the first run, but won the event on his second run with a combined total of 2:34.07. (Andy Cross, The Denver Post)

BEAVER CREEK — Thursday’s official training run for Friday’s World Cup downhill has been cancelled, not because of weather, but to save wear and tear on racers and the course.

Official training runs conducted under race conditions are mandatory because of the inherent danger of downhill, which involves speeds in excess of 70 mph and jumps in excess of 50 yards. Traditionally three training runs have been scheduled before World Cup downhills, but this year the FIS is leaning toward cancelling the scheduled third run if things go well the first two runs.

Lindsey Vonn in downhill training Tuesday at Lake Louise, Alberta, where she has won 14 times. (The Associated Press)

Vail’s Lindsey Vonn finished 18th Tuesday in a World Cup downhill training run at Lake Louise, Alberta, her first action in nearly a year. Four U.S. teammates finished ahead of her, led by Julia Mancuso, who was seventh.

After two more days of downhill training runs, there will be downhill races Friday and Saturday and a super-G on Sunday.

Vonn has won 14 times at Lake Louise, sometimes dubbed Lake Lindsey because of her dominance there, but she is taking a cautious approach to training runs after blowing out her right knee twice — at the 2013 world championships and again while training at Copper Mountain later that year.

The finish area grandstand at Beaver Creek is far bigger than it normally is for World Cup races. (John Meyer, The Denver Post)

BEAVER CREEK — It won’t be long now: Only 62 days.

The world’s best male ski racers are in Beaver Creek for World Cup races this weekend, but when they race they also will be thinking of the world championships here Feb. 2-15.

The finish area grandstand is far bigger than it normally is for the annual World Cup races here, and there is a massive glass-enclosed VIP area nearby. This grandstand will seat 3,500. Thousands more will be lining the course and the finish area during the races.

Sarah Schleper of the United States skis in the women’s slalom during the Alpine FIS Ski World Championships on Feb. 19, 2011 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. (Lars Baron, Bongarts/Getty Images)

ASPEN — She is a 35-year-old mom with two kids, a 6-year-old and an 18-month old. She is a four-time Olympian who retired from the U.S. Ski Team in 2011 but is now making a comeback to race for Team Mexico so she can race in the 2015 world championships at Beaver Creek near her home in Vail.

Sarah Schleper’s results haven’t been good, but she’s having fun.

“It’s hard because I don’t get a lot of training time,” Schleper said after finishing last in the first run of Saturday’s World Cup giant slalom. “I have to work and coach and three million other things as a mom. But it’s so fun just to be in the start and get the adrenaline. I guess I’m a little bit of an adrenaline junkie.”

Schleper, who has dual citizenship because her husband is from Mexico, finished 53rd in Saturday’s first run, 9.13 behind the leader. That was better than her result last month in the season-opening GS in Soelden, Austria, where she finished 10.87 seconds behind. After Soelden, Schleper began to wonder if she shouldn’t consider giving up her quest. When she posted those sentiments on Facebook, her fans urged her to continue.

Mikaela Shiffrin competes during the first run of an alpine ski women’s World Cup slalom, in Levi , Finland, Saturday, Nov. 15, 2014. (Giovanni Auletta, The Associated Press)

ASPEN — In two World Cup races this season, EagleVail’s Mikaela Shiffrin has had a breakthrough result and a humbling one.

In the season-opening giant slalom on Oct. 25 in Soelden, Austria, Shiffrin claimed her first victory and third podium in that discipline. But in the season’s first slalom Nov. 15 in Levi, Finland, the Olympic and world champion finished 11th.

“I was really disappointed after Levi,” Shiffrin said on the eve of this weekend’s races here. “I was pretty stressed out, trying to figure out what went wrong. I’m looking forward to these races here because it’s another chance to prove that I’m one of the best skiers in the world. I kind of let go of that idea that I’m Olympic champion, because it’s good for the rest of the world to have a label for me, but I wasn’t Olympic champion in Levi. It’s a wake-up call, it’s humbling, and I’m excited because I don’t want to be an arrogant ski racer, I just want to be a fast ski racer.”

Although I have no intention of shopping for anything more than a cheeseburger and a cold beer this weekend, I understand that some other folks do. So it’s a shame that we didn’t get the images posted on our DPO website of several outdoor products reviewed in last Wednesday’s section. They were printed in the newspaper, but the Titan Rod Vault was the only image to make it online. Apologies.